Tag Archives: motivational monday

For me friendship is probably more important than my family bonds, however it is way more fragile and not as everlasting. Here are some tips on how to get most out of your friendships.

Pay the bill: Don’t go Dutch on your friends. I don’t ever split the bill with my friends, unless we are with a large crowd. Take turns in paying the bills, it always leaves me with a special feeling. Either I treat a friend or my friends treats me to something nice while we had a good time together AND most importantly we don’t have to fight about how to split the bill to the last penny or get out our calculators because one of us had one more drink.

Give: I love giving gifts and receiving them. I love to see the excitement on my friends face and it leaves me feeling wonderful if I found or made something that brings a smile to my friends face.

Support: I try to support my friends in every decision they make, even if it might seem like a bad one. Sure I try to talk them out of really bad decisions but I don’t push. I am not their mum nor dad and there are probably enough people who told them they are wrong. Support them, and if thinks don’t go as planned at least they have learned their own lesson.

Listen: Let them whine, complain, and ramble on if they want too. Sometimes people just need to want to get things of their chest without any interruption. Let them talk, but listen! Give them advise or encouraging words when needed. Don’t just stare into space unless you want the same treatment.

Make memories: Do things, take pictures of it, and keep remembering it for the rest of your life. People you forget are often the people who you don’t share any crazy memories with. Even just a quick message that mentions a certain event can instantly refresh a slightly worn down friendship. However if you don’t have any memories in common friendships die a slow and painful death.

Let it go: The most important tip however is although energy is needed to let a friendship exist sometimes when things just cost too much energy and you are not gaining anything positive just let it go. It is not worth it, find someone better because even though your friends are important. Your own feelings are more important. And who knows maybe the sudden stop of attention makes your friend realize what they are missing out on!

what are the things you do to keep your friendship going? Do you talk every day? have weekly meetups? tell me, I am curious since I still have a lot to learn.

As you might have noticed I have been MIA for about a week, I have been stressing out about my application for Hanyang University while working 38 hours this week. I didn’t schedule posts I thought I scheduled but did I think about giving up? Remember my goals for this year? One of them is, posting a post every single day till at least the end of this year. And I might have failed, it doesn’t mean I can’t start over.

Every day is a new day, everyday you can take the opportunity to start anew. Don’t wait for special days. Don’t wait for the January first, don’t wait for Mondays, or Sundays, or the weekend. Just do it!

I don’t know I somehow have the tendency to sound like a Nike Commercial but really I cannot stress enough that if you want to accomplish something, anything all you have to do is start. Start anytime, any day you want and continue. If you feel one day, start again the next. Continue with this process long enough and eventually you will accomplish your goals.

Like this:

As you may or may not know I am currently in the process of applying for the division of international relations at Hanyang University in Seoul, South-Korea. I have finally accumulated all the papers I need but there is one more thing (or actually 2) that needs to be done and that is writing a personal statement and a study plan.

I have never done neither of those. To get accepted into a Dutch university all you have to do is apply and you get accepted (if you have the right level, which I have) to writing a personal statement and trying to sell myself is something completely new. So that’s where I need your help. I have written draft after draft for my personal statement and quickly wrote down a study plan (Still not completely sure what that is though) and I would really really appreciate it if you could read it and give me advice on how to improve it.

So here you go, excuse my terrible writing!

For as long as I can remember I have been interested in global issues. Why countries make certain decisions and how history and culture influence the way countries interact.

I read the entire encyclopedia to absorb as much information about different cultures and from primary school all the way through my high school career I thoroughly enjoyed world history and the globalization aspect of geography.

I also took all the language courses my school offered including the extra Spanish and Chinese language and culture courses to enable myself to get to know these cultures even more in-depth.

However it wasn’t until I went on youth exchange program to Mongolia where I realized that besides learning about new cultures, I enjoyed it even more to share my thoughts with people from all over the world about current affairs and how politics and history influence the current and future situation different countries.

After high school I studied at Leiden university in the Netherlands as a Koreastudies major for 2 years and that’s where I realized that I have a passion for the situation in North-Korea and vocalizing that North-Korea is just a small part of the problem and that many other nations are involved but in order to be able to understand a nation you have to understand the world.

I want to understand how nations and societies deal with the threats and why they react in a certain way. How peace organizations NGO’s and organizations such as the UN make decisions and one day I would like to become a key figure into giving people insight in the situation that hopefully leads to better understanding and perhaps peace with North-Korea.

I think becoming a student at the division of international studies at Hanyang university would enable me to expand my ability to think critically and analyze global problems so I can educate people about current affairs.

I would make a good student because I already have an extensive knowledge of European and Korean history, the Korean language and I am interested in global affairs.

Study Plan

During my undergraduate period at the division of international studies I would like to educate myself how nations and societies think, what drives them and how they interact. I would like to meet people with similar interested so we can share our opinions and learn from each other. And work my way towards taking the graduate courses towards the political science and law track after which I either want to work for an organisation such as the UN or as a professor to educate people about cultural understanding.

Although I really enjoyed listening and making my weekly music posts I want to try something new on my blog.

I feel like I need a bit of motivation and perhaps feedback on some of the projects I am currently involved in. I usually prefere to keep my projects for myself since I hate failure, and what is worse when I fail, people that know I failed. However keeping my projects a secret also helped me to not do things, but I think sometimes you just have to start! So, that’s what I am doing, starting now!

Today I will share three projects I am working on. The first one is still an early stage development, namely this blog. I’ve always wanted a succesfull blog. And by succesfull I don’t mean xiaxue famous. Succesfull to me means my own domain, my own designed webpage and a connection with people that visit my blog. I want to share what I know, while learning from others. I want to meet great new people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I am already well on my way and although I only seriously started with this blog for little over a month the amount of followers and commenters suprise me. And I am very greatfull and happy about it. Even if it takes years I would love to expand this blog into a website where I can help people achieve there dreams, encourage people to do what they want to do becuse that’s what I think is most important.

My goal is more involvement, I want to get to know everyone that even only looks at my blog, why do you return, or why do you stay away? I’d love to hear from you, even if it’s just a Hi every know and then. I also want to find a concept that I like, I am pretty close already but not quite there yet. But once I have that I think I will actually start with a design and getting my own domain.

The second thing I want to achieve is I want to be more organized, I want to have a perfect daily schedule, I want to be on top of things and not forget people’s birthdays. I am currently trying to get organized and trying to get rid of anything that is not only clutterling my room but also cluttering my brains. Edit my life, so to say. I thinking of of getting myself a filofax – which has the most amazing planners ever – they are expensive but it seems worth it. I just really want to be on top of things instead of constantly feeling like I am falling behind.

And last but not least, I really need to study more Korean. So starting from today I will study at least 15 minutes of Korean every day! No excuses, just do it!

I will keep you guys up to date one way or another and post things to motivate myself and you with your goals every monday starting from today.